


Memories Come and Go (They Make a House a Home)

by BabylonsFall



Series: Prompts [18]
Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, that's all this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 02:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabylonsFall/pseuds/BabylonsFall
Summary: Parker and Hardison go visit Hardison's Nana. Her house isn't what Parker expected, and neither is the woman herself. But, that's okay, because Parker likes the home this woman has made just fine anyway.





	Memories Come and Go (They Make a House a Home)

**Author's Note:**

> So I asked for more soft Leverage prompts, and I was given this lovely gem: _the thing that makes Parker comfortable with Hardison's Nana?_ from a very nice anon.
> 
> This one's at an angle to the prompt, I think, but I still like how it turned out, and I hope you do too!

The house around them was...still.

Not quiet. Not in a house like this —too many people snoring and rolling over in bed, the house too old to not have a few creaks and groans worked into the wood and stone, the street outside too close to the city to go too long without the crunch of tires slowly ambling down it’s pocked and potted stretch, even the thin trees outside the window too old and tall to not complain with the slightest gust of wind.

But, still. And the noise around them was...nice, in a way Parker hadn’t thought noise could be.

Curled up on a narrow twin bed, Hardison half-hanging off the edge beside her, listening to the soft scrapes of noise around them, she found that she kind of liked the noise. It made the house seem full. Lived in. Comfortable.

Didn’t mean she was going to be able to sleep anytime soon though. It wasn’t a  _ bad  _ night or anything. Some nights, she just...couldn’t sleep. Too much energy sometimes, too many thoughts racing through her head others, or, like tonight, just no urge to let her eyes slip closed. She’d learned long ago not to take it to heart. Normally, on nights like this, she could wake Hardison and they could figure out something to do. Or, she’d let him sleep and she’d wander off (slipping back into bed by morning because she’d discovered just how nice it was to be the person someone looked for when they woke up. The sleepy smile Hardison always gave her still filled her belly with butterflies and bubbles and she didn’t think she’d ever get used to it).

But, their flight had been delayed eight hours, and, genius that Hardison is, even he can’t control the weather (though, sometimes, she had her doubts on that), and being stuck in an airport in Denver on their way to Chicago hadn’t done either of them any favors. They’d both been worn out by the time they’d gotten to Hardison’s Nana’s—to the point where, after a quickly reheated dinner, she’d shuffled them off to bed with the rest of the kids, telling them they could all talk and actually  _ meet  _ in the morning.

And here Parker was, four hours later, already knowing she wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon.

Maybe it should worry her how easy it was to slip out of bed without disturbing Hardison. But, then again, she was Parker.

She gently made sure Hardison was actually  _ on  _ the bed before she padded out, shutting the door silently behind her, and heading down the stairs. She didn’t really have a plan for what she was going to do to wile away the time, just that on nights like this it was better for her to just...go.

She saw the glow before she hit the bottom of the stairs, but she still wasn’t...quite sure what she’d been expecting. Hardison’s Nana on the sofa, wearing a really soft looking robe, the tv on mute on some kind of...infomercial? A book in her lap and a small lamp tilted to let her read, was not it though.

The older woman sent her a look, raising a questioning eyebrow, but didn’t actually say anything, just turning back to her book with a hum. Parker’s not sure if that’s why she shuffled closer, but it definitely helped.

The couch was this big, monstrous thing—overstuffed, some vague floral pattern long since faded but with faint splashes of color here and there—Parker had thought it fit right in with the rest of the house, with the brief look she’d gotten earlier. She couldn’t see much in the dim light, but what she  _ could  _ see was mismatched furniture, lamps clearly bought in different decades, walls of pictures with different frames and different aging…

She rather liked it, just like she liked how the house sounded, this late into the night.

This house was something that had grown, with everyone in it. It was old, settled weird, and stuffed full of mix-and-match odds and ends, but everything was clean, and everything clearly had its place. It was a tornado of life and comfort. And Parker knew she’d be feeling...itchy, restless, within a couple of days (too many people she didn’t know, too much of a new experience, just  _ too... _ everything), but for now…

For now, she sank down on the couch, beside Hardison’s Nana. She pulled her knees up, her bare heels resting on the edge of the cushion, and pressed into the corner as best as she could with the over-fluffed pillows.

Hardison’s Nana shot her another look, one that Parker couldn’t quite parse before it was gone, but, she also smiled at her, so she figured she wasn’t overstepping too bad.

“Can’t sleep?” She didn’t quite startle at the soft voice, a couple minutes later, but it was a close thing. (Just because she couldn’t  _ sleep  _ didn’t mean she wasn’t  _ tired _ , alright?) She shook her head, ducking it when Hardison’s Nana just hummed, still looking at her book. “Join the club then. Remote’s on your side if you want to change it.” Seemed with that, Parker’d been given permission to stay at least.

She didn’t reach for the remote though—she liked how the room felt right now, didn’t want to mess it up by changing something. Besides, as her eyes adjusted to the off-dim of the lamp and too-sharp, changing colors of the tv, she could make out more of the walls across from her, and their myriad of pictures.

She couldn’t...figure out a pattern to them. Some of the frames were the nice, shiny black ones—sturdy and thick, bought to last, with too much white around the pictures. Some were thin, plain wood ones, chipped and scratched. A handful had patterns carved or painted on, in various stages of wear and tear. And the pictures were anything from staged group shots to school photos—couple graduation pictures scattered throughout—to vacation photos. Some faces popped up a couple times, some only once.

“...Do you remember them?” Parker asked, soft and small. It wasn’t a question she’d really...thought to ask, before it slipped out. But, if she were to think about it, later? It made sense. She’d been hearing stories about Hardison’s Nana for more than five years now, and every single story sounded almost too good to be true. Not that Hardison painted her as a saint or anything (close though, full star-eyes included), but...well.

(She  _ knew  _ there were good people in the foster system. In that same way she knew there were people who didn’t like money. And she knew her experiences in the system—as brief as she’d managed to make them—were just one way her story could’ve gone, among many, many others. Some better, some worse, some just different.)

“What’s that, dear?” Hardison’s Nana asked, glancing back up—marking her page as she did, the book falling closed in her lap. Parker squirmed slightly under the extra attention, even as a small part of her appreciated it—appreciated that the woman  _ was  _ paying attention. She nodded towards the walls, the pictures. “All of them. You remember all of them?”

The woman blinked at her, then glanced over at the walls, only to smile softly, shaking her head just barely. “Of course I remember all my kids,”  _ her kids _ . Said with a touch of pride and something else Parker wasn’t really awake enough to figure out. “Memory comes and goes some days, of course,” she grinned, and Parker couldn’t help but return it, “But I’ve got the important parts down, I’d think.”

Parker tilted her head, glancing back at the photos, before pointing at one in the corner—older, faded, three teenagers it looked like, caught in a moment of rough-housing, smiles big and bright despite the wear—”Who’re they?” If it was in Parker’s nature, it could’ve been a test—some kind of gauge to see if Hardison’s Nana was telling the truth about remembering all those kids and being  _ proud  _ of them—but, she’d already moved past that now. Some of the photos looked like they had stories behind them, and now she was curious really.

Hardison’s Nana took a moment to answer, squinting at the photo, before her whole face lit up, “Oh, that’s Theresa, Jackie, and little Mikey. Well, not so little anymore, boy’s going on thirty next March. Just caught them arguing over who got to read their new comic book first…”

* * *

Hardison was the first up the next morning—still on job time apparently, since, normally, dragging him out of bed before noon was a chore and a half, and yet, here he was, stumbling down the stairs at 5:30 in the morning. Parker and Nana were still chatting, having moved to the kitchen about half an hour ago. Nana was at the stove, making pancakes, while Parker was perched on the counter, mug of hot chocolate warming her hands.

“-and then you know the boy was doing his best to tell me ‘don’t you worry, Nana, I had absolutely nothing to do with it!’ Like I didn’t know Jamie taught him that same line two years ago. Had nothing to do with it huh? Only one of my kids to have a computer in his room at the time, and I’m supposed to believe he had no idea how those absolute assho-”

“Nana!” Hardison squawked.

“...jerks, those absolute jerks got enough viruses on their computers to shut down the whole building.” Parker snorted out a laugh, grinning brightly at Hardison’s indignant look.

“Morning Alec. You sleep alright, dear?” Nana asked without looking back at the door.

“...Did you sleep at all?” He shot back, slipping over to Parker after she gave him a slight nod to the unspoken question of space. Parker scooched back a bit on the counter, letting Hardison rest his hip on the edge between her legs. She grinned and leaned over to rest her chin on his shoulder, pressing a ‘good morning’ kiss to his cheek.

“I’ll take a nap later.” Nana responded back, sounding supremely unconcerned. “I was just telling Parker here some of my favorite stories from when you were little.”

“I was seventeen.”

“Like I said, little.”

Hardison grumbled, but he couldn’t fool Parker—she saw how bright his eyes were, glancing between her and Nana, and the smile trying to shine through. Seems he knew it too, because instead of arguing further, he wrapped his arms around Parker’s waist and buried his face in her neck with a mumble. Parker managed to save her mug through sheer luck—and Parkerness, but that wasn’t  _ fair _ , so luck it was—and just laughed at him.

“Tell me another one?”

“Oh, I could do this all day. There was that time with the paintball guns-”

“Nana!” Hardison whined, without actually moving from his spot curled into Parker.

“Oh don’t you ‘Nana’ me, I had to repaint the house! Let me tell my story. So, Alec was trying to impress the boy down the street I think...”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are always loved and really, really appreciated!
> 
> Come chatter with me about Leverage over on [tumblr](https://distinctivelibrarians.tumblr.com/) if you'd like!


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